Research published by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), a political think-tank established to promote “social justice, democratic participation and economic and environmental sustainability in government policy”, suggests millions of households may be paying more for their electricity and gas central heating as a result of anti-competitive measures employed by energy suppliers.

The IPPR study claims that families who rarely switch suppliers are most affected by the tactics, which are under investigation by the energy regulator Ofgem.

Claiming that around 5.6 million people could be losing out on savings worth up to £330 per year, the research adds further weight to the belief that new energy providers are being priced out of the market by the big six suppliers, which appear to support a system that penalises long-term customers while herding tariff-switchers from one major provider to the next with a seemingly never-ending string of “loss-leading” offers.

According to the IPPR, which examined tariffs for each of the big six energy firms – SSE, Scottish Power, Npower, E.ON, EDF and British Gas – approximately 60 per cent of households in Britain have never switched suppliers. Families who pay in arrears on a standard credit account are subject to the highest energy tariffs.

IPPR Director Nick Pearce said: “At a time when living standards are falling in real terms and more families are finding it hard to pay their energy bills, it is unacceptable that people are being overcharged for their energy use.

“The loss-leading by some suppliers is limiting competition in the energy market by making it harder for small suppliers and new entrants to compete.

“99 per cent of energy customers get their energy from the big six energy companies. Energy companies need stability in the energy market regulatory structure and the tax regime they face, but in return they need to operate in a properly competitive marketplace that is fair to all their customers”.

IPPR’s research will renew calls for the domestic energy market to be investigated in Britain. Energy users, meanwhile, are urged to reduce their reliance on gas and electricity by improving energy efficiency in the home. Double glazing, eco-friendly boilers and loft and cavity wall insulation can greatly reduce domestic energy consumption.

British Gas, one of the UK’s leading energy suppliers, has offered to pay £50 to any person who refers a “vulnerable” individual for free cavity wall and loft insulation from the firm.

The incentive is being implemented as part of a wider campaign to improve the energy efficiency of households across the UK. If more homes in Britain were adequately insulated, the nation would be on target to meet its carbon emissions target.

Improved domestic insulation would also benefit energy consumers, who could expect to save as much as £310 a year by installing loft (£175) and cavity wall insulation (£135).

In order to avail of the offer, the person who is referred to British Gas must qualify as a vulnerable individual. This means that the candidate is either a pensioner (aged 70+) or in receipt of certain benefits – namely Attendance Allowance, Child Tax Credits, Council Tax Benefit, Disability Living Allowance, Disablement Pension, Housing Benefit, Income Support, Income-based Job Seeker’s Allowance, Income-rated Employment and Support Allowance, State Pension Credit, War Disablement Pension or Working Tax Credits.

To be eligible for free home insulation from British Gas, candidates on qualifying benefits must earn less than £16,190 per annum. If the candidate meets these criteria, the referrer will receive a £50 payment. After the insulation work has been carried out, the beneficiary will also receive a payment of £50.

At a time when energy suppliers are squeezing every penny out of customers, driving many into fuel poverty, the referral incentive offers at least three benefits: the £50 cash payment; the free installation of cavity wall and loft insulation; and that neither person involved in the referral need buy their energy from British Gas.

Commenting on the incentive, Jon Kimber, British Gas New Energy’s Managing Director, said: “With household budgets stretched we know that people are looking at ways to save money. £1 in every £4 spent on heating is wasted due to poor insulation, so energy efficiency can have a massive impact”.

British Gas is not the first energy supplier in the UK to offer an incentive of this kind. Southern Electric offers £25 in high-street vouchers, whilst E.ON offers a £100 cash bonus to struggling households.

An undercover investigation into tariff switching has revealed that many of the UK’s leading energy suppliers are guilty of misleading customers over prices.

The investigation, which aimed to establish whether switching tariffs between suppliers offered any financial rewards, was carried out by consumer group Which? earlier this month.

Requesting quotes from supermarket-based sales teams, Which? discovered that representatives for the suppliers often gave inaccurate or misleading information. One sales team quoted a saving of up to £142 for switching tariffs, but Which? later calculated that the majority of customers would be worse off by a figure of between £39 and £311 if they went ahead with the switch.

The consumer group believes that many of the sales teams base their calculations on a best-case scenario, in which the interested customer is assumed to be on a standard tariff with his current supplier. Standard tariffs are almost always the most expensive, but even when the sales teams were given the name of a cheaper tariff only half revised the original quote.

Clearly, supermarket-based sales teams can be accused of misleading customers if they knowingly provide them with inaccurate information to encourage their switching suppliers.

A second investigation by Which? revealed that two of the big six energy suppliers – British Gas and E.ON – did not always inform customers of the cheapest tariffs when asked directly over the phone. In supermarkets, only two out of thirteen sales teams told customers that more competitive deals were available elsewhere.

Which? Executive Director, Richard Lloyd, said: “It’s simply not good enough for energy salespeople to be quoting misleading individual savings to people who sign up to switch in supermarkets.

“It’s little wonder that trust in the energy sector is so low. We want the energy suppliers to build confidence among consumers that switching is both simple and worthwhile”.

The investigation suggests that the alleged profiteering of energy firms may be even more extensive than initially suspected. At a time when the cost of electricity and gas central heating is unaffordable for millions of households in the UK, energy suppliers should at very least be expected to provide customers with accurate figures and helpful information.

Despite having reduced solar subsidies for households by more than half – a change that will take effect from April – the British Government has declared that almost four million homes in the UK will run on solar power by 2020.

The ambitious claim is guaranteed to raise a few eyebrows after government officials agreed to cut the amount paid to households under the Feed-In Tariff system (FITs), which provides a fixed rate of payment for households supplying solar-generated energy to the National Grid.

Energy Minister Greg Barker believes solar PV is a technology that will become more accessible to households over the next eight years. Mr Barker explained that, while the rate paid under FITs has dropped from 43p to 21p per kWh, the cost of solar photovoltaic panels has fallen by 45 per cent since 2009.

The Government made an unsuccessful bid to impose the solar subsidy cut late last year, only for a legal challenge to delay the move until April this year. Mr Barker argued that having a fixed-rate tariff for solar electricity allowed an unaffordable “bubble to grow” when the price of panels fell. Ministers now plan to implement solar subsidy cuts twice a year in line with manufacturing costs.

Representing the solar industry, Howard Johns was less than enthused by the Energy Minister’s comments. Mr Johns said: “The Government’s initial cut to the tariff was brutal and this further cut [in April] will be utterly devastating for the UK solar sector.

“The hard facts are that a cut on this scale will leave the solar industry dead in a ditch, destroying tens of thousands of jobs and cutting off a green, hi-tech British industry just as it starts to flourish”.

Mr Johns added: “In their rhetoric, ministers claim to want a renewable future, but they are destroying the very businesses that can make that future happen. This whole proposal has been rushed and chaotic. What was a real British success story is on the verge of being consigned to the dustbin”.

The Government predicts that 625,000 households will have solar panels installed over the next three years, despite only 100,000 or so homes choosing to avail of the technology when the tariff was fixed at 43p per kWh.

Thanks to rocketing gas and electricity costs, the very thought of not paying through the roof for electricity and gas central heating seems like the stuff of fiction. But a new campaign has launched which aims to stop energy providers ripping off customers.  

With record numbers of people falling into fuel poverty – which is becoming a major social problem – consumer organisation Which? has teamed up with 38 Degrees, a campaign group, to launch The Big Switch. The campaign is setting out to achieve the best possible prices for energy consumers.

Consumers have only 31 March to sign up to the campaign, after which energy firms will be asked to take part in what is essentially a ”reverse auction” to find the best price. All those who signed up will be invited to switch en masse. The whole process will be overseen by Which?

“We’re all sick of gas and electricity companies ripping us off. If thousands of customers band together, we’ll have the bargaining power to do something about it,” said David Babbs, executive director of 38 Degrees.

Figures from Consumer Focus have revealed that just under seven million households are currently fuel poor. More than half of all people aged 60 and over and living alone are said to be struggling.

There are schemes out there which offer assistance for people struggling with energy costs. Government schemes like the Warm Front scheme for example. Helping the poorest households make their homes warmer, people have until 31 March to apply for a grant. To be eligible for funding to put towards insulation and heating home improvements – such as cavity wall insulation and loft insulation - you have to be in receipt of pension credit or certain benefits. With £143 million set as the total amount of Government funding for the financial year £143 million, up to a fifth is expected to go unclaimed, meaning up to 16,000 vulnerable households could miss out.

To find out if you could be eligible for a Warm front grant call 0800 316 2805

Consultancy firm KPMG has announced that it does not intend to publish the findings of a report analysing the potential cost of government policy on green energy.

The decision to keep the full facts of the report hidden from public consumption was made after elements of the British media ran several misleading and inaccurate stories based on preliminary findings published last year. The BBC’s Panorama programme also attracted criticism after using the data as the basis for an attack on clean energy.

KPMG has stressed that the findings of the report are “ripe for misinterpretation”, so they will be shared only with interested parties.

KPMG’s Sorrelle Cooper explained: “The assumptions and parameters used in the model, which examined the investment and lifetime costs of different energy generation sources, produced large swings in the financial outcomes”.

In other words, KPMG cannot accurately predict the cost of the Government’s green energy policy. Publishing findings that are based on a broad range of possibilities is only likely to fuel more speculation on the price of clean energy.

Head of Climate Change at WWF-UK, Keith Allott, said: “The whole issue of energy bills and renewable energy has been whipped up into a media storm over recent months, with scant regard to the real evidence base”.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for RenewableUK criticised the methods used by KPMG to calculate the potential cost of clean energy. The spokesperson added: “KPMG needs to be made more aware of the benefits of wind energy. The cost is just £10 per household per year, according to the independent regulator Ofgem.

“Gas hit a three-year high of 75p per therm in Britain on [the 3rd February] as a result of the cold snap across Europe. We have to get off the fossil fuel hook to stop our energy bills escalating”.

The cost of green energy policy is of critical importance to households across the UK, where the cost of gas central heating in particular has risen sharply over recent years. A switch to renewables may prove expensive initially, but in the long term the move would likely save money whilst significantly reducing the country’s carbon emissions.

According to new measures proposed by the UK Government, zero-carbon homes are destined to become more prevalent within the next four years, whilst householders could be required to implement energy efficiency improvements throughout the home if they carry out renovations.

Government support for zero-carbon homes was declared some time ago, but the suggestion of forcing entire home greening if renovations are carried out is a recent development – and one that is likely to attract controversy.

Andrew Stunell, Communities Minister for the Liberal Democrats, wrote about the need to ensure that targets for zero-carbon homes are reached by 2016. Mr Stunell claimed that the proposed changes to building regulations would ensure that “buildings are safe and sustainable whilst helping to secure future growth and employment by means of a robust and effective bedrock of regulation”.

Helping to ensure the zero-carbon compliance of homes throughout the UK is obviously a worthy objective of any government proposal, but forcing homeowners to implement comprehensive changes if they build an extension or renovate part of a property might prove an especially onerous condition at a time when many households are struggling financially.

The proposals have served to clarify speculation on what zero-carbon compliance might mean for homeowners throughout the UK. It has been suggested that, rather than focus solely on carbon, energy saving targets ought to concentrate on energy usage. Flats and mid-terrace houses should satisfy that a target of 39kWh/m2/year, whilst semi-detached and detached domestic properties ought not to exceed 46kWh/m2/year. </p>

Additional savings are anticipated if more households install solar PV, but the future of Britain’s solar industry is currently in the balance. If government plans to reduce Feed-In Tariffs (FITs) is given the legal go-ahead, new solar installations are likely to decrease in number. Although not as lucrative an option to future households as it has been thus far, installing solar panels will help generations of households save money whilst meeting specific carbon and energy targets.

Enforcing home greening when renovations are carried out may be deemed a step too far for some, but the Government is likely to press ahead with the proposals in order to better its chances of meeting wider carbon-emission targets.

Energy secretary Chris Huhne has tendered his resignation after learning that he is set to face criminal charges following a driving offence he allegedly attempted to cover up. 

The allegations relate to a 2003 speeding charge which saw Huhne’s former wife allegedly take the blame for an offence which he is said to have committed. His ex-wife Vicky Pryce will also face prosecution over her involvement which lead to her accepting penalty points for the speeding offence.

Although the energy secretary continues to protest his innocence, following the news this morning that the Crown Prosecution Service intends to lay charges for perverting the course of justice, Huhne made the decision to step down from his post. He has since issued a short statement, in which he described the decision to charge him as ”deeply regrettable.”

“Whatever the terms of his departure, few can deny that Chris Huhne has really shaken up the energy debate over the last 2 years. He has certainly been successful in driving that agenda forward,” commented Juliet Davenport, CEO and Founder of Good Energy.

While Friends of the Earth’s Executive Director, Andy Atkins commended the energy secretary for championing the environment despite being part of an administration that’s been less than enthusiastic about being the greenest ever Government.

However Atkins added that his the way his department has incompetently handled the solar cuts fiasco has put almost 30,000 jobs in jeopardy, not to mention leaving energy consumers to compare energy tariffs to fight the problem of soaring fuel bills cannot be overlooked.

“What we really need is decisive Government action to get us off the hook of expensive fossil fuels and invest in clean British energy instead,” said Atkins.

It remains to be seen what effect Huhne’s resignation will have on the renewable energy sector. The news has be received with mixed reaction from the renewables industry, but by and large most seem to welcome the news.

Liberal Democrat Ed Davey has been announced as the new Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.

The case against Mr Huhne and Ms Pryce is scheduled to be heard in court on 16 February.